Open your eyes to a new kind of 'Carrie'

"Carrie: The Musical" by Bailiwick Chicago in the Richard Christiansen Theater at the Biograph.

MICHAEL BROSILOW

MICHAEL BROSILOW

They came in abundance on Thursday night to the Richard Christiansen Theater to sneer at Carrie, to mock her telekinetic powers, to laugh at her symbiotic relationship with pig's blood, to chortle at her fate. They came to poke fun at a girl who in 1988 lent her name to one of the great almighty flops of Broadway history: "Carrie the Musical," a monument to excess, a boulevard of shattered producer's dreams and the graveyard of Royal Shakespeare Company credibility, a YouTube curiosity, a showtune-night-at-Sidetrack romp.

Michael Driscoll's modestly scaled but superbly directed production for Bailiwick Chicago works — and, no, I have not taken leave my critical faculties — because it is mined for teenage truth. The production is deadly serious. When the title character gets drenched in prom-night blood — just enough that high-school kids might have been able to rig it up, not so much that Carrie floats in red paint — your heart goes out to the girl. I know it's hard to believe. But then, you haven't seen Callie Johnson's truly superb performance as Carrie White. Johnson, one of the Chicago area's brightest young musical talents, brings a level of emotional engagement to some of the scenes that suggests she had been preparing as if doing Ophelia's suicide scene. She is that intense.

She's not the only notable young talent in Driscoll's superbly cast show. Katherine L. Condit, who plays Carrie's fundamentalist mother, is genuinely creepy without lapsing into stereotype. Samantha Dubina, who plays the Carrie-tormentor Chris, makes as mean a girl as you'd ever see in high-school hell. And Rochelle Therrien, who plays Sue, is aptly conflicted at each and every moment. And then there's Henry McGinniss, another name to watch and a charming singer, in the role of Tommy, the decent-at-heart young man who squires She Who Moves Stuff Around to her tragic prom.

Born of Stephen King in 1974, "Carrie" was always supposed to be horror-literature theater and, you could argue, the characters in the book served as a model for many of the movies that were to follow ("Mean Girls," "Heathers"). One of the many things to admire about Driscoll's production is how it pulls off the special effects in this black-box space. Stuff does indeed move around and you're not especially aware of the wires. In essence, Driscoll has returned "Carrie" to its literary-horror roots, requiring a little imagination.

Now, caveat emptor, "Carrie: The Musical" is still "Carrie: The Musical" and there is nothing this production can do about the limitations of Michael Gore's vanilla score or the rhetorical thuds you can find in some of the lyrics (by Dean Pitchford) and the book (by Lawrence D. Cohen). The company is small, which has its impact. But the singing here is well above the average of non-Equity companies — the musical direction is by Aaron Benham and it is admirable. So is the suspenseful nature of the whole darn enterprise.

All of that makes this "Carrie" an excellent choice for real highschoolers. The tension of the show does not eradicate all the laughs, and the veracity does not undercut the satiric wash of teenage cruelty that was always present in King's work.

But this is about the only "Carrie" you ever need to see. She lives! May her Bailiwick prom last all summer.

Las Vegas has been through many reinventions — the Rat Pack era, the family-friendly moment, the uber-luxe resort era. But the profound, post-recession Vegas reinvention that has gone most unremarked upon to date is not something the Vegas tourist authorities like talking about: It's the revenue-generation...

In ego-fueled world of stand-up comedy, size matters. "Chicago, we sold this place out for three shows," the diminutive but blowing-up Kevin Hart crowed from the stage of the United Center around midnight on Thursday, his fans waving back and cheering from the crammed rafters. "You're trying to...

"We've got magic to do," says the Leading Player in "Pippin," the eclectic and bizarre musical artifact from 1972 that retains a remarkably special place in the hearts of audiences, including those who were not born, or even conceived, when Ben Vereen first essayed the role with the great choreographer...